The Bush administration was looking to "win" in the Afghanistan by doing nation building, which was never going to work, and certainly wasn't going to be accomp

The Bush administration was looking to "win" in the Afghanistan by doing nation building, which was never going to work, and certainly wasn't going to be accomplished by military means. Obama and Trump both chose to kick the can the road, to not pay the political cost for "losing", Biden ended the conflict, and paid the political price. But if the US had a different objectives, every human settlement in Afghanistan could have have been radioactive ash by September 12, 2001. Or, more realistically, the US could have gone in, killed all (for some value of all) the local elites as a warning to leaders elsewhere about the costs of harboring terrorists, and then immediately left the country in the same sort of chaos that they eventually did a couple of decades later. Kabul delenda est was always accomplishable. The only people who should be ashamed of the their performance in Ukraine are the Russians, and the Europeans, for failing to be able deter or respond to the Russia on their own despite having an economy five times the size. US interests are perfectly well served by seeing the Russian military mauled for a generation at the cost of aid, much of it material that was going to be decommissioned anyway, that costs roughly what Americans spend on golf in a given year (Once you throw in the costs of drinks on the 19th hole.) Anyway, US arms sales are up since the start of the conflict, Russian sales have cratered.